December 1966 — VOL. 47, No. 12 — Seeing Canada
Whole
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Centenary year offers Canadians
an opportunity to take a good look at themselves and their
country, to view themselves from many angles, and to see themselves
as others see them.
The pictures should have some of the qualities seen in great
portraits: they should be like us, not idealizations or, on
the other hand, caricatures; they should show our traits and
our spirit, not just the skin and clothes we wear. Mona
Lisa is considered to be a masterpiece precisely because
it expresses an inner spirit.
Our pictures of ourselves should have some depth and range
to their setting. It was Leonardo da Vinci who said that perspective
is the bridle and rudder of painting. It is also the only
way in which we can judge what we are putting into the forefront
of our lives and what we are banishing to the background.
To obtain a conspectus of Canada, we may detach ourselves
from our bustling surroundings and take station out in space.
We shall see twenty million Canadians, heirs of the 3,635,000
who inhabited the country a hundred years ago. We shall see
grain elevators and sky-scrapers, railways and air strips,
thousands of square miles of factories and millions of homes,
all signs of material advancement. We shall also see the sun
shining on the domes and spires of thousands of cathedrals,
churches and synagogues, evidence that moral values are treasured
among us.
No one in his senses would suppose that everything in each
century is better than in the one before. But viewed in a
broad way, as from a great altitude, the movement is recognized
to be of that sort.
Canada may not have achieved all that she might, but when
we measure her progress we do not find cause for pessimism.
Our past is not ignoble.
When we sketch the background with bold strokes, without
going into details, we see that what looked at the time like
disastrous events were merely incidents in the development
of the nation, while the day-today efforts of the farmers
and woodmen and explorers and trappers and governments built
lastingly.
Canada has achieved, not completely but to a considerable
extent, a way of life having certain merits that are new in
human history. It has moved toward eliminating poverty; it
has cut down illness to a degree that a hundred years ago
would have seemed ridiculously impossible; it has spread the
opportunity for education throughout the country; and it has
maintained a high degree of harmony between freedom and order.
This is no unprofitable recapitulation. When we look at
our past, we understand better what we are today and what
we must do to make the future worthy.
Having respect for the past both because of what our forefathers
did then and because of what it has enabled us to do, does
not mean adopting it slavishly. We may admire and profit by
it, without trying to squeeze today's circumstances into its
mould.
The pioneers
Though Jacques Cartier made his first voyage to this land
in 1534, the event whose hundredth anniversary Canada celebrates
in 1967 did not take place until 333 years later.
Those three centuries were marked by the hardship of pioneering
in a country for which life in French and English villages
was a poor rehearsal.
Besides the adversity of climate and the heartache of loneliness
there were hostile clans, belligerent neighbours, natural
barriers, and the uncertainty of life under rulers who were
three thousand miles away across an ocean traversed slowly
by sailing vessels; rulers who knew little and cared less
about conditions in their colonies.
We may look back toward our ancestors with very deep sympathy
for all their toil and tribulation, for all their unfinished
business, and for all their unfulfilled desires, while at
the same time giving them credit for their impregnable fortitude
in laying the foundation of a road on which we may put the
top-dressing. As we try to improve the heritage they left
us we may find it an occasion for meekness.
The men who followed the pioneers, to bring about Confederation,
were brave men, too. They were not setting up a blast-off
for a flight to some future state: they were building the
state there and then. They were not philosophical theorists
like Plato framing his Republic. They were not gifted
with second sight showing them that within a hundred years
the population would have increased between five- and sixfold;
that oil and gas and gold and silver and copper, and iron
ore, and nickel and a dozen other minerals would have entered
the economy of the country; that transportation by land, water,
air and pipeline would revolutionize the way of living. What
they did was construct within their scope of knowledge, and
with spirits that were idealistic and hands that were practical,
a foundation on which two races and cultures could find firm
footing as a united nation.
Perched in an office building forty or more storeys taller
than our fathers ever dreamed of, we may feel that we are
getting up in the world. But modernity is only the moment
of time in which we happen to find ourselves.
We have reached these heights partly because of our heritage.
From our pioneers we inherited the faculty of hard work, of
making do while improving, of attending to business today
while preparing for tomorrow. From more remote ancestors we
inherited the ethical standards of the Hebraic-Christian faith;
the humanistic spirit of the Greeks and of the Renaissance,
emphasizing the dignity of man; the Roman and Anglo-Saxon
rule of law to provide for peaceful change in society; and
the democratic faith in liberty, equality and fraternity which
came from the eighteenth century philosophers and the French
Revolution.
Looking forward
No nation has solved the problem of keeping itself static.
Day by day the past is being brought up to date and pushed
into the future. Monuments to statesmen and conquering heroes
are among the most depressing sights in the world unless someone
keeps them tidied up and in order.
Love of one's country involves knowing what the country
was, what it is, and what it may become — and then working
toward the resulting ideal.
Canada's past was a good past with which to face the future.
No country on earth is in better position to make its future
bright and significant. The great danger is that of coming
to believe that present wellbeing justifies relaxation.
The future of Canada is largely based upon how we bestir
ourselves today, but it also includes expectations and hopes
which have their foundations deep in our thinking. It will,
therefore, pay us to be quiet every once in a while, withdrawing
from the compulsive haste of our environment, and listen to
our deeper thoughts about the past and the future. Johannes
Brahms is quoted as saying: "The reason why there is so much
bad music in the world is that composers are in too much of
a hurry."
We cannot be John Cabots, sailing off into the blue with
the King's patent to discover new lands. But we can be explorers
in spirit, with democracy's mandate to make this land better
by discovering new ways of living and of doing things.
The spirit of exploration, whether it be of the surface
of the earth or the principles of living greatly, includes
developing the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment
with cheerfulness, and triumph with humility.
Patriotic democracy
Every person who thinks beyond next pay-day knows that a
nation does not live by gross national product statistics
alone. It must have high employment figures and healthy production
figures, but these are not enough. It needs a spirit that
holds the community together by giving its citizens a sense
of sharing something unique. Its people may have different
personal traditions, cultures, religions, backgrounds and
earning power, but they must feel themselves to be vital elements
in the Canadian society.
This does not mean being patriotic in the sense of believing
that your country, or province, or county is superior to all
others because you were born in it or live there. True patriotism
is not the emotional luxury of vanity expressing itself in
flag-waving, but a sentiment that expresses itself as a share
in collective life, standing staunchly for the good principles
of one's country. It is morale. It is living together.
Morale is a sharing of goals in common, the enthusiastic
planning of effective means of reaching those goals, and the
aggressive and efficient team action that makes goals become
realities.
As the wizard Merlyn said to King Arthur in T. H. White's
delightful story The Once and Future King: "The destiny
of Man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing
you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each
other out of separate trees."
The patriotic democracy we seek is a spirit within individuals,
not a piece of governmental machinery to hold people together.
The citizen is one who enjoys the right of every man to have,
in accordance with his aptitudes of character and mentality,
the material and spiritual opportunities that nature and science
have placed at the disposition of mankind, and who accords
the same right to all other people. He believes in equality,
but leaves room for excellence.
Citizenship requires a large amount of perceptive intelligence.
It is not a mode of life for people who are willing to hear
only what they have always heard and who cling to beliefs
and myths because they have always taken them for granted.
To be an enlightened citizen is the essential idea which
gives meaning and order to the discordant and confused mass
of details in national life. This requires that we continue
to learn. Democracy cannot be preserved by an illiterate mob:
it demands that we struggle from ignorance to wisdom.
The picture of a democracy drawn by Thucydides, one of the
world's great historians, is of a state made up of people
who are self-reliant individuals, who want to be let alone
to do their own work, but who are also closely bound together
by a great aim, the commonweal, so that every one seeks to
devote himself to his country's good.
If democracy is precious — and it is immeasurably superior
to all other forms of national life — it must be worked
at co-operatively, or we forfeit freedom.
At the beginning of our second century of nationhood we
are still learning to be Canadians. We have no time to spend
over the dead ashes of past controversies.
About living together
Looking at Canada's problems as from a great height does
not mean looking at them as one who does not care, but rather
as one who cuts through attitudes and prejudices to look at
facts as they are and then joins others to fix what is faulty
and expand what is good. This approach brings together people
of all races and languages and religions to realize their
hopes in the large context of Canada. The people who built
the Tower of Babel deserve credit at least for getting together
in an effort to reach heaven.
What is the story of Canada? Great nations, France and Britain,
established colonies in North America. By the chance of arms,
all came under the British Crown. In similar circumstances
elsewhere the outcome has been painful as one culture absorbed
another forcibly. Canadians found a different way of doing
things. They embarked upon an experiment never conceived of
elsewhere. Settlement was not reached by warriors drawn up
in battle array as at Runnymede, or by terror and the guillotine
as in France, but peacefully by negotiation. It was a rare
feat, accomplished with great difficulty.
The nation that was established a hundred years ago is a
continental one made up of separate provinces. Canada has
made her two-race society work by applying a great deal of
intelligence, hard work, and determination by both groups.
All history shows that dissolution of Canada into smaller
states would be like the blowing out of candles in a castle,
one by one, until all the castle is dark. The anthropologists
have found in all the outlandish parts of the world that it
is possible for human beings to live together co-operatively
under an extraordinary variety of conditions.
Plato's story in one of his dialogues makes clear that prosperity
results when pious, law-abiding, industrious people develop
a civilization, but falls apart in the midst of bickering.
Alexander Hamilton, urging the United States against fragmentation,
said this: "I have endeavoured to place before you the importance
of union to your political safety and happiness. I have unfolded
to you a complication of dangers to which you would be exposed,
should you permit that sacred knot which binds the people
of America together, to be severed by ambition or by avarice,
by jealousy or by misrepresentation."
And Napoleon Bonaparte declared: "The simple title of French
citizen is worth far more than that of any of those thousand
and one denominations which have sprung from the spirit of
faction, and which are hurling the nation into an abyss."
Utopia requires purpose
We cannot do without the idea of Utopia, even though we
deny being idealists. If there were no Utopian standard for
Canada it would be necessary to invent one. Some may attempt
to evade responsibility for building a better Canada by saying:
"What's the use? Life is but a dream". The realist will reply:
"The search for Utopia may be a dream, but let us live this
dream as beautifully as we can."
The world we are building, even in our most enlightened
moments, is still far from the world we want: a world of good
will, mutual respect, reciprocal confidence, and unselfish
co-operative endeavour. What we seek will recapture the values
of the Golden Age and give them a larger and more universal
setting.
A nation is not, as H. G. Wells cynically suggested, a group
of people gathered together under a foreign office, but a
group of people with a purpose in life, a purpose in being
together. Canada has passed the twenty million mark in population,
but the state of the nation is not measured in figures. It
is far stronger than the sum of its parts. It has a bond of
confidence between its people, the quality of comradeship,
and a sense of united purpose.
An observer from the Manchester Guardian wrote a
few years ago: "Canada seems to be a nation wrapped in the
darkest self-doubt." There is danger that some of our people
may feel "lost", and perhaps the time has come to develop
for them a dynamically constructive role in national life.
It would concentrate thought and energy on making Canada a
good place, and combine practical wisdom in government with
the moral virtue of an enduring code of values.
"Value" is a multi-purpose word. It may mean the tendency
to prefer one kind of object to another; it may mean the choice
of this or that action directed by anticipation or foresight
of the consequences; it may be concerned with what is ethically
excellent.
When a way of life is changing very rapidly, as our own
is at present, offering more and more choices for individuals,
there is danger that the essential foundation principles may
perish. Then it might come about that we had no longer enough
items on which all members of our society agree to provide
our culture with form and substance. This is why it is urgent
that we take an over-all view, plan a course, and enter enthusiastically
into preserving and enlarging our already big store of things
in common: our culture.
What culture is
Culture is not adeptness in performing or admiring the arts.
It is the superiority of our thought, our enjoyment of beauty,
our efforts to raise ourselves and others to a higher level;
it implies openness of mind, objectiveness of attitude, a
sensitive appreciation of human values, and development of
the potentialities all of us have.
To expand in this way is to grow up, to become mature. There
is nothing sadder than the boy genius who does not understand
why the performance that won him acclaim when he was fifteen
draws only polite applause now that he is thirty.
We have, in Canada, passed from the stone age to the age
of agriculture; from that to industrialization; from that
to nuclear power. While we are not trying to handle the everyday
work of this century using stone-age tools, we have perhaps
relaxed our grip on the urbanities picked up through the years
and remained static intellectually.
The imponderable things are important; things that cannot
be measured with the yardstick of utility or weighed on the
scales of affluence. In planning ahead for our second century
as a nation are we going to judge the degree of our civilization
by the number of automobiles per hundred thousand population?
A building which houses archives has printed on its façade
the phrase from Shakespeare's Tempest: "What's past
is prologue." In the play, Antonio completes his comment by
saying that what is to come is in our hands.
This is a time for digesting experience, applying co-operative
wisdom, and making plans. Without plans we shall be jostled
and confused by events. Our social and political structures
will become a medley of ill-assorted adaptations to successive
needs. We shall be like the paramecium, that lowly one-celled
creature which progresses through life by taking avoiding
action. It bumps into an obstacle, backs up, and goes off
in a new direction.
Our plans will have to be repeatedly re-edited, of course.
We may have to go back to the drawing-board in the knowledge
that charts drawn a hundred years ago or last year do not
meet the priorities and proportions of today.
When we have plans, and when the traditions and energies
of all the nations represented in our population become assembled
to press toward the ideal, Canada will become a distinguished
nation, and Canadians will enrich their lives.
All men have many things in common although all men are
different. We can always find an area of agreement if we determine
to do so. Thereafter, co-operation requires only tolerance
and trust, and these can often take the place of legislation.
There is no "ism" that will substitute for patient, pedestrian,
earnest work participated in by everyone pulling in the same
direction.
Action needed
As Canada turns into her second century of confederation
she has no time for lethargy. She needs leaders in church,
university, school, community and government who have a long
view and who will sound a spirit-stirring note calling her
people to national and individual advancement. Not so much
a new ideology is needed as an earnest spirit that will sustain
the people of Canada in seeking the good life.
Our Centenary resolutions must have vitality and the thrust
of immediacy. This is not a time to dote or dream, but a time
for obtaining knowledge and taking action; for a sense of
purpose plus enthusiasm. The Greeks meant by "enthusiasm"
the visit of a god: to be enthusiastic is to permit the divine
fire to flow through one's veins. Then the impossible becomes
possible.
How far this is from the belief of some that an easy life
is desirable! Such people are looking only for what is given
them. If bread is supplied regularly and plentifully three
times a day, they will be content to live by bread alone,
with perhaps a few circuses to liven things up. About such
people the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky's parable says:
"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say
to us, 'make us your slaves, but feed us'."
Is there any danger of this in Canada? Even the Greeks and
Romans descended to it. After prevailing magnificently in
a barbaric world, slackness and softness came over them to
their ruin. In the end, they wanted security and a comfortable
life more than they wanted freedom, and they lost all.
Canada has, at this memorable period in her history, assembled
the spirited and enterprising people of numerous races in
an environment favourable to the development of a great society.
It is a time for all Canadians to share a great moment in
history.
Sir Charles G. D. Roberts wrote a poem addressed to Canada
which begins: "O child of nations, giant-limbed, who stand'st
among the nations now ... ". It has a vigorous line:
"O Falterer, let thy past convince thy future."
In doing so we shall see the need to brush aside artificial
grievances, throw away scarecrows, spurn glossy bait, and
exorcize divisive influences.
With vision, and the firm and dignified determination to
do the best we can, much may be accomplished in the second
century of the nation — much that we should be proud
to look back upon from Canada's two hundredth birthday.
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